The darkly comic meet-cute of a very odd couple!

NPR has called Charles Mee “the Public Domain Playwright," because he makes his entire body of work available to the public online in what he calls “the re-making project.” Mee explains that, since his plays are inspired by others’ writing and art, particularly the Ancient Greek plays of Euripides, he thinks of his work as the “pillaging” of source material. And he encourages us to “pillage” his own plays—to pull them apart and use their components to create new works.

Theatre artists Leslie Pasternack and Carol Raiche were looking for a two-hander that could accommodate an absurd aesthetic and would celebrate female friendship. Exploring Mee’s work, they found First Love. 

That melancholy comedy set “in the world of Magritte” depicts two septuagenarians encountering one another in the park and falling into a wildly erotic relationship that soon devolves and combusts. They weren’t so keen on the sex and some exploding toaster effects in First Love, but they fell for the sparks flying between the two main characters.  

They have made arrangements with UTA for the rights to re-make First Love, and the result is “Fresh Tarts”! Follow them on this romp into their own weird world, where loneliness is a lurking presence and a goofy new friendship helps to dispel the darkness.